Chats

Chats are the heart of Gravity Rail. Every conversation between your AI and a person lives here — whether it started from a phone call, text message, web chat, email, Discord mention, or Slack DM. This is where you monitor what's happening, jump in when needed, and review how your AI is performing.

Starting a Chat

Most chats start automatically when someone reaches your workspace through a channel. But you can also start one manually:

1. Go to Chats
2. Click the New Chat icon (top right)
3. Pick a workflow and agent
4. Start the conversation

Manual chats are useful for testing workflows or reaching out to specific members.

Channels

Conversations can happen across multiple channels, and every channel feeds into the same chat interface:

The channel appears as an icon in the chat list so you can see at a glance how each conversation started.

Chat States

Every chat has a state that controls how it behaves:

Toggle states from the chat header or the chat list.

How Workflows Guide Chats

Every chat follows a workflow, and understanding this relationship is key:

1. When a chat starts, it enters the workflow's starting task
2. The task provides the AI with its prompt (instructions), goal (when to move on), and abilities (what tools it can use)
3. As the conversation progresses, the AI moves between tasks based on goals and sub-task connections
4. Different tasks can collect different forms, use different tools, and even switch to different agents

The current task shows in the chat header, so you always know where in the workflow a conversation is.

What the AI Does During a Chat

Your AI agent can:

• Respond naturally based on the task's prompt and the conversation history
• Collect form data by asking for information conversationally — it doesn't go field-by-field; it adapts to the flow
• Switch tasks when a goal is met or a user's needs change direction
• Use abilities like web search, calendar booking, file access, and custom tools
• Escalate to humans when it encounters something outside its scope

Finding Chats

The chat list supports filtering to help you find what matters:

Quick Actions

From any chat, you can:

• Pause / Resume — Toggle whether the AI responds automatically
• Mute — Stop notifications for this chat
• Archive — Mark the conversation as complete
• Assign — Hand to a specific team member
• View Member — Jump to the person's profile and data
• Generate Summary — Create an AI-powered summary of the conversation (see below)

Chat Summaries

Generate AI-powered summaries to quickly understand what happened in a conversation:

1. In the chat list, expand a row by clicking the chevron
2. Click Generate Summary
3. The system analyzes the conversation and produces a concise summary, auto-generated title, and optional label updates

Summaries are especially useful for long conversations, handoffs between team members, and post-conversation reporting.

Tips

• Use "Needs Response" as your dashboard — This filter shows you everything that requires human attention
• Pause before replying — When you want to take over from the AI, pause the chat first so it doesn't respond while you're typing
• Archive completed conversations — Keeping your active chat list clean makes it easier to spot what needs attention
• Label chats for reporting — Apply labels to categorize conversations by topic, outcome, or priority

Related

• Workflows — Building the conversation flows that guide chats
• Actions — Automating responses to chat events
• Channels — Setting up the channels that create chats
• Labels — Organizing chats with color-coded tags